Words

 

Words

It's only words, and words are all I have
To take your heart away

You might only have words, but those words are important.

You have to be careful with words.  Cockney rhyming slang or highly technical language can do more than just be the words that are spoken.  The words, and the accent which is used to pronounce them, may reveal more than intended about the society to which the speaker belongs.  That language may be meant to exclude others ( if you are not "in with the in-crowd", you prove that by not understanding the slang of the "in-crowd"), but not being able to use the words of a society or its preferred accent does not mean that you are not trying to be a part of a society. 

My maternal grandmother spoke only Polish, but she still considered herself to be an American.  My paternal Irish ancestors did not learn English because they thought that was the superior culture, but because they were forbidden to speak Gaelic.  I try to remember them and not use words to keep people out, but to use words to include people and to speak the truth.  The important thing is the truth, not the words. 

Freedom

 Freedom '90

All we have to do now

Is take these lies and make them true somehow

All we have to see

Is that I don't belong to you

And you don't belong to me yea yea

Freedom

Freedom

Freedom

You've gotta give for what you take

Being in favor of freedom does not mean that you are for Freedom Caucuses or Conferences.

Testing support for freedom by support for “freedom” caucuses is like asking “Are you still beating your wife”, leading, questions.  Posing the "wife beating" question that way and only allowing yes or no responses, implicitly assumes that at one time the respondent has beaten his wife.  A yes or no response provides no information if the respondent  NEVER beat his wife. 

Freedom Caucuses treat rights as absolutes when they are not.  Rights are protected, but they are never absolute.  You have the RIGHT to shout fire, but that right is not absolute.  You have the DUTY not to shout fire in a crowded theater.   You have the RIGHT to bear arms.  You have the DUTY not to use those arms in a mass shooting.  Confusing rights with duties is the opposite of freedom.

Perspective

 

One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor

It's just apartment house rules

So all you 'partment house fools

Remember: one man's ceiling

Is another man's floor

It may be a floor to you, but it may be a ceiling to someone else.

Perspective matters.  You can't just develop the best solution from your perspective. You do have to consider other perspectives as well.  Take a store for instance.  From the perspective of the store operator, if he could just got rid of the customers, who only misplace items on the wrong shelf, or buy items, he would not have to restock the shelves.  However from the perspective of the customer, if you couldn’t find or buy any items from shelves, you wouldn’t patronize that store and that store would close.  So store operators need customers and customers need store operators.

Economists classify goods as rival ( are charged a price) or non-rival ( are not charged a price); and exclusive ( if I use a good, no one else can use that good) or non-exclusive ( if I use a good then someone else can also use that good).  We are used to dealing with Private goods that are rival and exclusive ( like  pieces of food).  That item has a price and if I consume it, then you can not also consume it.  Cable TV is rival and non-exclusive.  It has a price but my using it in my house, does not prevent you from using it in your house.

The problem is that some goods are rival and exclusive from the perspective of the seller, e.g. a seat at a concert.  But those same seats are rival and non-exclusive from the perspective of the buyer.  The buyer is interested in the concert and will pay for a seat at the concert which is non-exclusive, but is ONLY interested in the concert, not the seat, which is exclusive.  That same seat will not interest the buyer unless that concert is playing.  That seat may be a floor to you, but it is a ceiling to the concert hall operator.  Perspective matters and coming up with solutions that recognize all perspectives is important.

Ranked Choice Voting

 

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Now laughing friends deride
Tears I cannot hide,
So I smile and say, when a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes.

Should we bring back the smoke-filled rooms at political conventions?

I would suggest that selecting candidates through primaries, rather than through conventions, has changed the dynamic from a ranked order method to a plurality method.  Candidates used to be selected based on a majority of the convention.  After many ballots and smoke-filled rooms, supporters of candidates that did not have a chance of winning changed their support to candidates that they preferred.

Primaries replaced those smoke-filled rooms.  Rarely do political conventions go to even a second ballot.  However primaries also select candidates that receive a plurality of the vote rather than a majority of the support.  By doing so, candidates that might be the last choice of the second-place finisher, are selected.  The process may be more transparent, but it has replaced a ranked order system, as imperfect as it was, with one where the plurality wins.  Eventually, according to Duverger’s Law, there are only two parties and voters may choose the least offensive candidate, rather than the best candidate.

There are  polls for the best college football or basketball team, which is basically a ranked order system (e.g. how many first-place votes, etc.) which is then used to select the teams for the Football Championship playoffs and is considered in seeding the teams for the NCAA March Madness playoffs.  Why do we select sports teams using ranked order, but select candidates for election by  primaries?  Kind of makes you wish for those smoke-filled rooms again.

Trade

 

Money, Money

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
A buck or a yen
A buck or a pound.
Is all that makes the world go around
That clinking, clanking sound
Can make the world go 'round

Does a buck still make the world go around, and should it?

If one county produces petroleum but needs grain, and another country produces grain but needs machinery, and still another country produces machinery but needs petroleum, it is possible that a three-country trade agreement could take place.  However just like in sports, multi-party trades are complicated and hard to complete.  Trading is easier if it is conducted using a currency that each party can earn, and then use that currency to complete their own trades.  In 1944 at Bretton Woods that international reserve/trading currency was established to be the US Dollar.  While the Nixon Shock of 1971 abolished the Bretton Woods agreement,  the US Dollar is still the preferred medium for international trade. According to  Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), the US dollar, a buck, was used in 51.9% of the international currency transactions in 2014. The second, with a 30.5% share of the totals is the Euro, which was not even a currency yet in the song from Cabaret, which was set in pre-WWII Berlin, and which replaced the mark. The British pound was third with a 5.4% share of the total value, followed by Asian currencies, such as the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan.

As international trade increases, this causes an increase in the demand for US Dollars.  This means that the US trade deficit must increase, or else this international trade could not take place.

This is the Triffin dilemma, named for the Belgian-American economist, Robert Triffin, and has been known since the late 1960s, although the dilemma can be traced to a 1932 lecture by French economist Jacques Rueff. As long as the US Dollar is the international trading and reserve currency, if international trade increases, then the US trade deficit will also increase.  Additionally short term domestic economic objectives, such as controlling inflation, may result in conflicts with long term international objectives. That this was known long ago, does not make it any less true.  After all, the fact that money makes the world go around is also still true.

Leadership

 Johnny B. Goode

His mama told him "someday you will be a man
And you will be the leader of a big old band
Many people coming from miles around
To hear your playing music when the sun goes down
Maybe someday you name will be in lights
Saying "Johnny B. Goode tonight"

What does it take to be a leader?

“I wanted to always play it (the coronavirus) down. I still like playing it down because I don't want to create a panic,"  Donald Trump in a March 19, 2020 phone call with Bob Woodward.

“You can’t handle the truth”, Colonel Nathan R. Jessup testifies in court on "Code Red" in  the movie “A Few Good Men”

“I have nothing to offer but Blood, Sweat, Toil, and Tears”, Winston Churchill in a speech to parliament on  May 13, 1940.

All of the statements above are concerned with leadership and the truth.  Society needs truth from our leaders, no matter how unpleasant that truth may be.  The people CAN handle the truth, and expect the truth from its leaders.  We will not panic, if we are told the truth. 

We also expect the truth in promises from our leaders.  Churchill also did not promise victory, which he knew he could not assure, but he did promise that he would never surrender.   “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”.

There is a reason that Churchill is celebrated as a leader.  He told the truth, and he did not make promises that he could not keep. If leaders tell us the truth, and do make promises that they can not keep, the people will do their part and not panic. We place our trust in leaders, who place their trust in us.

Choices

Aquarius 

When the moon is in the Seventh House 

And Jupiter aligns with Mars 

Then peace will guide the planets 

And love will steer the stars  

Do our stars choose what is best for us? 

Society consists of individuals. What is best for society, may not be the best for each individual in that society. My favorite way to understand this is the bank run scene in the film, “It’s a Wonderful Life”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPkJH6BT7dM. At the 1-minute mark of this clip, Tom demands all of his $242 from the Bailey Building and Loan, and says it is better to get half the amount from Mr. Potter, than to get nothing. George Bailey gives the customers his own money to stop this and at the 3 minute 30 second mark kisses Miss Davis when she only asks for $17.50 to tide her over. Tom is willing to consider taking a loss of 50% because he is considering a User Optimal solution. George and Miss Davis are seeking a System Optimal solution. 

Back in 2005, I was part of a team studying the transportation impacts of Climate Change on the Gulf Coast. In the middle of the study, Nature provided an unplanned experiment when Hurricane Rita struck Houston. The evacuation of Houston was a massive failure. The developers of the evacuation plan were part of the consultant team. Their evacuation plan assumed that each household would use only one vehicle to evacuate the members of the a household to safety, and any other vehicles would be abandoned at the household. Thus a household with 3 drivers and three cars would still only use one car, would evacuate on a timed schedule by neighborhood, and the highways would not get clogged. But the developers of the evacuation plan explained during the study that they themselves had one driver in every one of the cars they owned, ( 3 cars and three drivers per household means 3 cars evacuated), and left as soon as the evacuation started, which was their User Optimal solution, and as a result the roads were clogged. So even those who developed the System Optimal solution still chose a User Optimal solution, which explains the clogged evacuation highways. The lesson is that it is hard to choose the System Optimal solution when it requires you do something that conflicts with your own User Optimal solution. 

But “There is no “I” in Team”, “I only regret, that I have but one life to give for my country”, etc., etc. We want, and admire, System Optimal solutions, but we will choose User Optimal solutions. The problem is when the sum of User Optimal solutions is often way less than the System Optimal solution. That is why the fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves.